


Communication

by MissAppropriation



Series: Time War Team [7]
Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Awkward Conversations, Complicated Relationships, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Family Feels, Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Hugs, Identity Issues, Loneliness, Old Friends, POV The Doctor (Doctor Who), Parent-Child Relationship, Parenthood, Psychic Abilities, Repression, Temper Tantrums, The Doctor & The Master (Doctor Who) Friendship, The Doctor (Doctor Who) is an Idiot, The Master (Doctor Who) is an Idiot, Time War (Doctor Who), Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-16
Updated: 2020-09-16
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:48:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26498143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissAppropriation/pseuds/MissAppropriation
Summary: The Master finds he may not be as inscrutable as he imagines himself to be, while the Doctor reflects on parenting during a War.
Relationships: The Doctor & The Master (Doctor Who), The War Doctor & The War Master (Jacobi)
Series: Time War Team [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1342192
Comments: 4
Kudos: 9





	Communication

**Author's Note:**

> Hello all!
> 
> So I've been having some pretty serious writer's block while I try to find my feet creatively during this pandemic. (I hope you all are staying safe and relatively sane. <3) This fic is not my favorite of the things I've written: it just didn't quite come together the way I wanted and a lot of it felt a little repetitious. However, there's some good stuff here and I did really want to try War Doctor POV, even though that's a challenge for me. And Thicker Than Water was always going to be a tough act to follow... Anyway, it's been too long since I posted something, so here you go!

**Communication**

A warrior stood in the middle of a crowded village square. It was a fact-finding mission, just a quick side trip to be sure the Dalek activity in the area hadn't touched the local population.

Asking around had revealed that everything was fine here, thankfully. The people were very nice, as most people were once you got to know them.

The nameless warrior would have been happy to linger for a few hours, even a few days... He craved quiet in a way he never really had in past lives. Maybe he had finally found more excitement than even _he_ wanted...

A Time War would do that, he supposed.

But if he stayed, the War would follow.

Soldiers didn't belong outside of the battlefield. There was no place for him in the peace of these people's lives.

And that was alright, just as it should be.

But there was such a deep-seated beauty to it all... Mesmerizingly perfect in its honest imperfection.

The winding village streets. Mothers and children. Ordinary people spending their days working and going home to have dinner with their families.

This... _This_ is what he was protecting.

But from a distance. 

Because if he got too close, they might get hurt.

The War was a part of him, just as he was a part of it.

And the War would tear these people's beautiful lives apart until not even tattered threads remained.

Still, it was good to see it in person, even if just for a few moments.

A good reminder.

So he shook hands with the villagers and started back towards the TARDIS and his friend.

He felt the turmoil before he heard it.

The warrior picked up his pace and rounded the corner to see the Master in the middle of a cluster of villagers, whirling from one to the other, trying to shout at everyone simultaneously.

Little did he know how well he was succeeding.

"Oh, dear," the warrior sighed.

Perhaps he should have addressed this sooner but... 

_Well._

Nothing else for it now.

He walked up to his friend.

The Master caught sight of him and immediately all the rage and confusion were channeled in his direction like a gatling gun. 

"And where were _you_?" the Master demanded.

_Chaos and force and confusion._

"I went to talk to the village council," the warrior said. "Is everything alright? You seem upset," he tried.

"Oh," the Master said, blue eyes wide with overstated sarcasm. "Oh, _do_ I? Do I seem _upset_? What was your first clue?"

The man closed his eyes for a moment against the waves of anger radiating off the little boy in front of him. 

He could handle it.

The villagers, however, were not equipped for the Master's storm of emotion.

The man got down on one knee and reached out to his friend. "What's wrong?" he asked gently.

"What's _wrong_ ," the Master ranted, "is this _stupid_ place. You're always wandering off and leaving me alone with stupid _idiots_."

The villagers were putting their hands to their heads, pained by the alien rage.

The man regarded the tantruming child in front of him thoughtfully. The Master seldom said quite what he meant but the seed of truth was always in there somewhere...

 _"You left me alone,"_ he had said.

It was true. The man sometimes forgot that even because the Master often _could_ take care of himself, at least for short periods of time, didn't mean he always _should_. 

Or that he never got frightened on his own.

"I'm sorry," the warrior said sincerely. "You're right. I should have told you where I was going. I didn't mean to worry you."

"I'm not _worried_ ," the Master hissed with a stomp of his sandshoe. "I'm _angry_."

The man blinked. He certainly was that.

But there was far more than just anger in that storm.

Still, the anger alone was enough to cause some very real problems.

The villagers had started grappling with each other, lashing out in response to emotions which weren't even theirs.

The man's gaze lingered on them for a moment, then returned to his friend who remained thoroughly oblivious to the burgeoning riot he was causing. "Alright, I understand," he said calmly. "But we can't talk about it here."

The Master's eyes got cold and he took a step back. The rage burned hotter.

"Don't talk to me like I'm a child, Doctor," he said dangerously.

The warrior moved forward to put both hands on his friend's slight shoulders. "Listen to me," he said firmly. "I know you're upset, but you're going to need to calm down."

This was not what the Master wanted to hear. " _Don't_ tell me to calm down," he snarled back through gritted teeth.

The warrior glanced at the escalating chaos around them. Time was up.

He looked his friend in the eyes. "Sorry about this," he said.

"Sorry about _what_?" the Master spat out disdainfully.

The warrior placed both hands to his friend's head and put him to sleep like he was switching off a light.

He caught his friend easily as he slumped forwards. 

He weighed so little. 

The warrior gathered the Master up in his arms and stood.

The villagers were now shaking off the effects of what they had just experienced. They were understandably confused but no one appeared to be hurt.

"Sorry about that, everyone," the warrior announced to the crowd. "You'll be alright in a few moments," he assured them.

And with that, he turned to make his way back to the TARDIS with his unconscious friend.

Once safely inside the TARDIS, the warrior settled the Master on his seat next to the Console.

He took off his friend's impractical red shoes - another conversation they would need to have soon - and covered him with a blanket.

Then he dematerialized the TARDIS, heading into the Time Vortex, and moved back to stand over his friend.

He'd never get used to how small he looked.

When the Master was asleep, it all appeared so straightforward, so comprehensible: he just looked like a child.

All throughout the Universe, in all the centuries the man had spent traveling in Time and Space, children were the same everywhere.

The needed love, care, connection, understanding. Honesty. They needed to feel safe.

They were passionate about things grownups just couldn't understand.

Lost in their own little worlds, with hardly any perspective on anything outside of their own personal experience.

Always assuming every small setback was the end of the world.

The man had seen this countless times in the children he had known. He remembered feeling it himself, back when he had been a child.

He couldn't imagine how confusing it must be to find yourself suddenly revisiting that.

Because no matter how young he might look, the Master had lived and killed for centuries.

And no matter how many years he had lived, right now he was indisputably very much a child.

The warrior could imagine that would be hard to process, difficult to accept.

And not just for the Master.

The Master and that man the warrior had been, back when he had had the freedom to choose who he wanted to be... They had been friends for nearly their entire lives.

It was ineffably strange to spend centuries as someone's friend, only to abruptly find yourself recast as their de facto parent.

Strange for both of them.

But... As bizarre as it was, it also felt like a natural progression, in a way.

The nameless warrior reached down instinctively to pull the blanket up to his friend's chin, tucking it in a bit tighter.

He knew the Master was well-equipped to fight in the Time War, that he was far more than he currently appeared.

Still, sometimes, when the man looked at him, it was so hard to remember that.

Especially at times like these.

He looked so peaceful, his breathing deep and even.

It brought back memories from so long ago...

A time when the warrior was a different man, with a different life.

Before he had even been the Doctor.

It awoke instincts which were problematic in the middle of a War.

Because the warrior considered himself a practical man. That had been the intention when he had regenerated.

But the memories of who he had been still remained. 

Perhaps a part of him had expected those memories to be buried, to sleep quietly within his mind as he took on a new role and a new identity.

Or rather, _no_ identity.

Because what use were names as the Universe burned?

And while he had known that becoming an entirely new person was mere fantasy, he had never counted on those ancient memories being quite so strong.

They looked back at him out of the eyes of orphans and the pleading faces of the people he fought to save.

They lived on in a flash of tousled blond hair and in the desperate joy of families impossibly reunited after a disaster.

In every happy ending and in every tragedy.

In the old friend who had always been a part of the family, though not in this precise capacity.

Even with the most deliberately-planned regeneration, with each trait carefully chosen in light of the battles ahead, still... There were always surprises.

Life was like that, too.

The man brushed a hand over the sleeping boy's neatly-combed hair with a rueful smile.

It made sense, he supposed. He had requested _warrior_ that day he'd found himself dying on Karn.

But his intention hadn't been merely to fight for the sake of fighting.

It had been to _protect_.

He had chosen to become a warrior because that is what the Universe needed now. Because there were so many out there who _couldn't_ fight, who couldn't protect themselves.

The Master's current incarnation tugged at this instinct, though experience and practicality rightly insisted that the Master was far more than the helpless child he seemed to be.

And though the man found his instincts often leaning towards the overprotective, the Master seemed to have over-adjusted in the exact opposite direction.

He'd always been canny, paranoid, highly skilled at looking out for his own interests.

He still was all of those things, as odd a fit as that was for such a small child.

But now he seemed to have far more confidence in his own abilities than he, or in fact _anyone_ , could accurately presume to claim.

He seemed to think he was invincible.

He'd always been a little like that...

But this was on an entirely different level.

Perhaps, the warrior supposed, it was the result of being reborn out of literal death. Time Lords, as a race, had built an entire society around cheating death. But there were not many individuals in the whole of creation who could claim to have done so on quite the scale which the Master had.

To die and then to be brought back, but not through your own power or choice...

Overconfidence seemed like an understandable response.

Or perhaps it was far simpler than that...

Children seldom had a realistic concept of their own mortality, after all.

Nor of their own needs, even their own emotions at times.

Already, in the brief time since the Master had been resurrected, the man had seen ample evidence of this.

And it was going to be a difficult conversation when he awoke.

It was, nonetheless, one which couldn't be put off any longer.

The man stopped to pat the Console fondly on his way out. He could have put the Master to bed properly but he always seemed more comfortable in the Console room, especially when he was alone.

Unsurprisingly, considering how he had spent the last couple of centuries.

The man would have stayed with him but... The Master wouldn't be happy when he woke up.

 _Let him be the one to initiate the conversation, give him that brief moment of control_ , the man thought.

Control was largely an illusion but one which the Master had always deeply cherished.

And that illusion was about to be sorely tested.

The man went to his workshop, first door on the right, well within earshot.

The summons, when they came, carried through the corridors, impossible to miss.

The name he'd forsaken, the name his friend still obstinately clung to, ringing shrilly from the Console room.

The man paused in his project immediately, stifling a smile. He'd hoped his friend would have slept a little longer. But the Master never did quite what you wanted.

Nor did most children, he supposed.

The man stood. Not fast enough.

" _Doc-tor!_ "

Each syllable separated with insistent ire.

This time he did smile. "Alright, I'm coming," he called back.

The Master's current incarnation was making the man reassess his previously-held conception of his friend as a patient person.

Perhaps that had always been an illusion as well.

The Master did love his disguises...

He'd found quite the disguise this time.

He clearly hadn't yet realized the many possible applications which being a child offered him in manipulating others. But he was bound to soon...

The Master was forever the opportunist.

That would certainly be interesting to keep up with.

But that was a problem for another day.

The man walked into the Console room to see the Master sitting up, arms crossed, glare aimed at the doorway preemptively, just waiting for his friend to walk into the line of fire.

"Good morning," the man smiled.

"No!" the Master said, pointing vehemently in his friend's direction.

No details. Just a general forbidding of _everything_ , it seemed.

The Master then proceeded to violently kick off the blanket. A thoroughly unimpressive gesture.

The man frowned and cleared his throat slightly to cover the impulse to laugh.

The Master didn't notice, far too busy looking for his shoes.

They were right in front of the sofa but he made an enormous production of finding them, making frustrated noises as he retrieved them and started putting them back on.

"Were you planning on going somewhere?" the man wondered.

The Master shot a disdainful glance back, yanking at the laces angrily. "Wouldn't you like to know?"

That was clearly a _no_.

He was just putting his shoes _on_ because the warrior had taken them _off_.

Or perhaps he thought his carefully-chosen outfit lent him some level of authority?

It would take more than a pair of sandshoes and a Prydonian tie to do that.

The Master finished tying his shoes and crossed his arms again, raising his chin with the look of one taking an underperforming employee to task.

"What," he enunciated carefully, "the hell."

The man shook his head wearily. "Language."

_When had he started cursing?_

Probably around the time he had started peppering English words into his conversation.

All the television he was watching these days was having a very interesting effect on his vocabulary.

The Master glared, ready for a fight. "You don't get to tell me what to do, Doctor."

"That isn't how we talk to each other," the man replied patiently.

"Oh," the Master said with exaggerated surprise, "do we _talk_ to each other now? Because I _was_ talking - and _you_ decided to knock me out."

"Yes, I'm sorry about that," the man said again. "It wasn't the right place for that conversation and if you'll remember, you weren't exactly in a listening mood."

"That had better not be your whole excuse," the Master growled warningly.

The man knew it was meant to be threatening but it came across as charmingly cute.

Carefully, the man didn't react.

Sparing his friend's ego had become a full-time job.

"It's not," the man admitted. "We need to talk."

The man saw a flash of worry cross the Master's face.

Then the boy got a sly look and climbed up to sit on the back of the seat, muddy shoes firmly planted on the cushions below. He looked his friend dead in the eyes, daring the man in front of him to argue. 

"No," the man said.

The Master made no move to obey. He looked so defiantly proud of himself, the man nearly lost his composure.

_What was it with children and the backs of furniture?_

All across Time and Space, the conversation always went exactly the same way.

Still, the man followed the script.

Because as mind-bendingly complex as dealing with the Master's current situation was, _this_ at least was about as simple as a situation could be.

"What if you fall?" the man pointed out reasonably.

"I won't," the Master replied, as if it should be obvious. As if the adult in the room had somehow not realized all this time that the solution was just _not_ to fall.

The man shook his head at the boy, wondering what had prompted this current rebellion. "Sit down, please," he said.

"Make me," the Master challenged with a grin.

So, with a shrug, the man moved forward, picked him up and set him down on the proper part of the sofa.

The Master, unhappy with how his bluff had backfired, crossed his arms and legs and stewed.

"Alright, this is serious," the warrior said, getting into a position that put him closer to his friend's eye level. "I know you're upset but we do need to talk."

"So talk then," the Master responded, avoiding his friend's gaze.

He was scared.

The man could feel it.

_What did the Master think he was going to say?_

That was a question for another time. For now, the sooner he got to the point, the better.

"So, today," the man said. "When you got upset."

"Is that not allowed?" the Master asked contemptuously, examining his tiny, perfectly-groomed fingernails.

"Now, don't be silly," the man smiled.

The Master shot an uncertain glance in his direction, assessing. Then he looked away again and started deliberately brushing dirt off his shoes onto the couch.

The man resisted the urge to sigh.

"Remember when we were young?" the man asked. "Well," he qualified, giving the Master an up-and-down glance, "the first time. How our telepathy was... Less controlled? More instinctive?"

The Master stopped in the middle of scraping mud flakes off the bottom of his shoes, finally paying attention. His face locked in a grimace as if he had suddenly realized that he was listening to literal nonsense. "What are you _talking_ about?" he demanded in a belittling tone.

"It seems that there are some unexpected side effects to the age of your current regeneration," the man explained slowly.

The Master frowned, eyes traveling upwards to his friend. And for a moment, he just looked like a child. Small and uncertain. Looking to the adult for answers.

"When you get upset," the man continued, "the way you did today... You're projecting those emotions outwards."

The Master's child face was an open book. The man watched the blue eyes go wide, ten different emotions chase each other across his face in quick succession.

"Outwards to...?" he asked after a moment.

"To everyone," the man told him.

As the man watched, the Master seemed to shrink down, hugging his knees to his chest, becoming even smaller than he already was.

The man knew how much the Master valued his control, his privacy.

With all the loss of autonomy that he was already dealing with as a child, this would be quite a blow to his ego.

Indeed, he looked absolutely devastated.

The man waited a few moments, giving him space.

"Well," the Master said at last, clearing his throat and trying for a wry smile, "that's embarrassing."

The man reached up to squeeze his shoulder. "It's fine."

The Master's eyes narrowed, a hair's-breadth away from open accusation. "Why didn't you tell me sooner?"

The man shrugged. "I'd hoped you might get it under control."

"I didn't even know I was doing it..." the Master muttered uncomfortably. The man could see him thinking back, rerunning memories in light of this new information. "Wait..."

And there it was, right on cue.

That light in his eyes. 

The realization of an unseized opportunity to be exploited.

A look that had signalled impending trouble as far back as the man could recall.

The boy shot the warrior his sharpest glance. " _Why_ did you knock me out?" he asked. Blue eyes slitted thoughtfully and every single day of the Master's long, complex existence lived in those eyes. "What happens?" he demanded. "When I get..." He paused for just a moment before opting for the euphemism his friend had used. "... Upset?"

The man had expected this. You couldn't hide things from the Master, not for long anyway.

"They feel what you feel," the man confirmed honestly. "Whatever that might be."

The Master's expression turned to crafty delight. "Huh!" he laughed.

The man shook his head with a long-suffering sigh. 

Temper tantrum as weapon...

Only the Master could find something to be happy about in such a scenario.

The Master paused in his calculations to lean forward, staring the warrior right in the eye, barely inches away. "So _that's_ why you didn't tell me."

"If you like," the man agreed equably.

The Master sat back, giving him a look that was equal parts appreciative and vindicated.

That _hadn't_ been the reason, of course.

The Master seemed to presume that he would now use this new power as indiscriminately as everything else which fell into his eagerly grasping hands.

He seemed to forget, most likely by choice, that this time he wasn't the only one here.

The warrior wasn't planning to allow that, even if the Master could find a way to utilize his unexpected new ability.

But he looked so much happier with the storyline he had concocted.

The one where his weakness would be transformed into unbeatable strength. Where his losses became wins.

He was smiling now, eyes darting through the middle distance, watching possible futures play out, considering, planning. His feet kicked in time to a tune only he could hear.

Well, perhaps not only him. Because he was humming along to it now as he plotted. The man didn't recognize the song but felt he could safely assume it was the theme to one of the Master's cartoons.

The man reached up to nudge his friend's cheek. The Master, scheming interrupted, pulled away as if the touch was unwelcome. But his expression said the opposite. So the man let his hand settle on his friend's arm.

"I'll help you learn to control it," he told the Master.

No one should have to be alone, especially in a War.

Especially a child.

And the man still had those memories... Those memories of another life. A long time ago, when he was a little boy with a name of his own. When his world had fallen apart and he had been alone.

And then he had met another little boy just like himself and he had never felt quite so alone ever again.

He smiled at the Master.

The Master smiled back. Then he looked away with a casual shrug. "Whatever," he said with an imperious wave of his small hand.

And the gratitude was written all over his face.

If the Master had any idea how transparently his emotions showed on his current features, he'd stop worrying about the projection and self-trigger a regeneration immediately.

But the warrior wasn't going to be the one to give that away.

He gave his friend's arm an affectionate squeeze and reached up to pat him on the head.

The Master ducked out of the way, hands flying to his hair to make sure it wasn't out of place. "Careful!" he cried.

He was still smiling though.

The man stood, slowly. The Time War had been hard on this body and he was starting to feel it.

But it wasn't enough to slow him down, more an inconvenience. 

And there was still so much work to be done before this regeneration could be exchanged for another.

He looked at his childhood friend from across the apparent age gap and wondered at the strange whims of a Universe which had seen fit to throw them together like this... Facing precisely opposite challenges.

The Master seemed alright now. Calm, controlled. The man reached out tentatively with his mind: no storms, none of the fear and anger from earlier.

The conversation had gone slightly better than expected, overall.

Still. Preventing this in the future was a concern.

"So, what did they do?" the man asked. "The villagers. They seemed nice enough," he added.

The Master's freckled nose wrinkled in disgust. "They were just _annoying_ ," he glared over his shoulder, as if they were still there somewhere.

The man thought for a moment, letting the pieces fall into place as the Master's eyes settled moodily on his red shoes, kicking back and forth in the gap between the couch and the floor.

"They treated you like a child, didn't they?" the man realized with a sad smile.

The Master glared upwards for just a moment, expression warring between annoyance and admiration.

That, the man knew from long experience, was the face the Master made when someone had guessed the correct answer.

"They're good people," the man said.

The Master responded with a derisive snort as the kicking picked up tempo.

"They couldn't know you're older than their entire civilization," the man said with a chuckle. "They were trying to be kind."

"Well, they're _bad_ at it," the Master pronounced with another brief and fiery glance.

The man shook his head down at the boy, amused and slightly at a loss.

The Master was so different now than he had been in his first childhood.

Regeneration was such a strange business. Giving you second and third and fourth chances... But always on its own terms, with so much fine print, so many unforeseen addendums. And you never knew what you were signing up for until the deal was done.

Then you had to reacquaint yourself with _yourself_ and there was never an instruction manual.

No life was ever a replay of what had gone before, no matter what you might expect.

The man wondered what he would do if he got a second chance at childhood... Although, to be fair, he'd been pretty happy with the one he had gotten the first time.

But, thinking back, he wasn't all that surprised that the Master was taking a different approach to childhood this time around.

He remembered the boy he'd met at the Academy. So subdued, withdrawn, guarded. 

But with that fire burning inside.

That need for _more_ which had outlasted every regeneration.

He hadn't seemed like a child then, not really. More a tiny adult, excelling at what their world had expected of him: to grow up. To do so immediately and completely, without fuss or spectacle.

Now, he was demonstrative, fragile, wildly and openly emotional. Revelling in the things which children were meant to enjoy, with little self-awareness or embarrassment, as children were meant to do.

It wouldn't be smooth sailing. There were far too many contradictions for that to be the case.

His persona was dependent and he had been an adult too long for that to sit well.

But there was an honesty to it which the Master hadn't had the freedom to express in his first childhood.

He reached out instinctively to others, searching for connection even as he tried to fight it, though he was ashamed at his own weakness even as he did so.

The man thought of all the friends he had had in his previous lives, of all the wonderful people he had found - or who had found _him_ , if he was being honest.

Those people had saved him, so many times, in so many ways.

When he was alone, things had been... Different.

Not in a good way.

Those incredible people had taught him about what truly mattered, the things which were frowned-upon or ignored on Gallifrey. And when he had forgotten, they didn't hesitate to remind him.

And the Master... Who had he had to teach him?

The man knew well that the Master had only ever really had _one_ friend.

No wonder he kept coming back to that one person.

No wonder he clung so fiercely to that name, keeping it alive with sheer, unstoppable force of will.

That name which used to belong to the nameless warrior.

The Master kicked thoughtfully at the air, mouth screwed up pensively.

His thoughts were shielded, as usual, and the man wondered what he was thinking...

Sometimes he knew what was going through his friend's mind but sometimes... Sometimes he was just a mystery.

_What should he say?_

There was a weight on the man's chest. He could almost see the choices branching out endlessly before the boy in front of him, with all his potential and all his power.

All that fear and need.

It was a lot of responsibility, being the one person in the Universe whom a child looked to for answers.

Because there was a chance... Just _a chance_ that the Master might accept his help.

An intimidating prospect.

He felt unprepared for that.

And it wasn't the first time he had experienced that specific feeling...

Because, as he had learned first-hand in another life as another man... That was just _parenting_.

And in parenting, much as in War, one had to just get on with the job at hand.

Whether one was prepared or not.

He stared down at his friend, one more question sticking in his mind.

The Master quickly caught him looking and returned his gaze, challenging, questioning.

"What?" he demanded.

The man couldn't resist asking. "What did you think I was going to say?"

The Master looked away. A trace of alarm. A flash of guilt, of fear. A brief frown of pain.

"I don't know what you're talking about," the Master lied unconvincingly.

"You know I'm on your side, right?" the man said quietly. "You can talk to me, if you need to."

Because this had happened a few times already, the Master accidentally projecting the emotions he couldn't control.

And the man had felt his friend's rage, terror, confusion, even hatred.

Underneath that was guilt, pain, a cynical expectation of betrayal.

And a loneliness that broke his hearts.

He couldn't help but wonder if that need, that empty longing was an effect of the Master's current form... Or if it had always been there, hidden safely away, from the very day they had first met.

The Master looked at him askance, a smirk playing with deliberate idleness across his face. Blue eyes like frosted windows, filled with a complexity hidden in plain sight. Begging to be seen, to be understood. To be appreciated.

"I'll keep that in mind," the Master said with an edge of sarcasm.

"Please do," the man replied earnestly.

The Master's eyes widened slightly in an expression the meaning of which the warrior could only guess at since the Master wasn't projecting at the moment. But it somewhat resembled panic.

The Master threw himself down on the sofa and the screen on the Console switched on by itself.

The man really was starting to wonder how his friend did that.

"Thought you would have had enough of that," the Master said, intently watching a program the man didn't recognize. They all sort of looked the same to him. "Considering."

The warrior could feel his friend's attention on him despite his apparent absorption in the cartoon.

That was nothing to do with projection. And it wasn't anything new.

"No," the man said, taking a seat next to the Master. He took a moment to blink bemusedly at the television. He really didn't understand the appeal. "Not really."

"Well," the Master shrugged, "seems like I've found a better way of communicating." He snickered to himself but there was just the hint of a sneer to it. Self-directed.

The man frowned.

When the warrior had been someone else, long ago, when he was young... When they were _both_ young... The Master had looked after him.

And he'd been safe, protected, had gotten the chance to be a child despite Gallifrey's efforts to make him grow up so soon.

It had been so long before he'd realized even a fraction of the effort his friend had put into making that happen.

He suspected he still might not know the half of it...

And then they'd both grown up and things had become complicated and life had become about betrayal and choices and conflicting ideology.

The story could have ended there...

It hadn't.

It restarted, over and over again. Each new chapter reframed by what had gone before.

And they had played and fought across the stars without confronting either the good or the bad times.

Without saying the things other people said to each other.

Finding solace in the conflict.

Now the conflict was not a game, nor was it between them. The enemy was far bigger than both of them and, as always, they had united against the common threat.

But as the man sat next to his friend, he came to a couple of conclusions: Gallifrey owed the Master a childhood.

And the man owed his friend the protection which would make that possible.

"You know," the man pointed out delicately, "talking might actually help you prevent that from happening."

"You might not like what I have to say," the Master replied, guarded eyes focused on his television.

The man chuckled reminiscently. "And when has that ever stopped you?" he asked rhetorically. The warrior smiled and stood to go. "Think about it," he said simply, clapping a hand down gently on his friend's knees.

The Master responded silently with a long, calculating look. One that clearly said, _"What's in it for you?"_

The man smiled encouragingly and the boy turned away with a distant frown.

The man hoped he really _would_ think about it.

Because in all the cacophony of emotion the Master had screamed out indiscriminately at the world, the man hadn't once felt anything positive.

Apparently, those were the feelings he had learned to control.

That made the man extraordinarily sad.

He was nearly out of the room before he realized that perhaps he should start by following his own advice.

Children learned by example, after all.

He turned back. It took more courage than he expected.

"I'm glad you're here," he said quietly. "I missed you."

The Master didn't respond. Not even with the flicker of a reaction. 

If the man didn't know better, he would have thought the boy hadn't even heard him.

But he _did_ know better.

He smiled and left the Master to his cartoons.

Over a week later, they were both rebuilding a captured Dalek black box.

The boy had spent the days following their conversation carefully closed-off. More so even than usual.

But the man waited, letting his friend process at his own pace.

He couldn't help being curious, however. And whatever the Master was holding onto, he had probably thought of it the moment the man had offered to listen.

The man watched the little boy, jacket hung over the back of his chair, shirt sleeves rolled up, deep in circuitry and calculations.

All their lives, no one had ever truly understood the Master.

But, strangely, they always thought they _did_.

From the moment he entered a room, they assumed they had all the answers.

And he actively encouraged their delusions, playing to their preconceptions like an actor on a stage.

They saw what he wanted them to see and looked no further.

It was important to him, this image he had so painstakingly constructed. He clung to the persona, to the illusion, the single dimension he allowed the world to see... Hiding all the pieces which didn't fit safely out of sight.

No one ever felt confused when they met the Master.

They felt _certain_.

They shouldn't.

Because that was the very essence of the trick.

And the reality was that there was so little which was certain about the Master.

The man knew this as no one else did. He had spent many frustrating hours over many centuries struggling to figure his friend out.

And after all this time, there were still things about the Master which he simply didn't understand.

But he had always known to question, to look past the mask. Trying to decode while the Master responded by creating ever more mazelike corridors between himself and the world. Dead ends and trapdoors and false doorways leading to nowhere.

_So much effort..._

The man without a name had to wonder: how many people did the Master think he needed to convince in order to sell the illusion to himself?

The entire Universe...

Would it ever be enough?

And to what end?

Was that something the Master had ever even considered?

Perhaps the well-worn disguise was finally beginning to chafe, no longer fitting comfortably as it used to.

Perhaps, ironically, in becoming a child, he had begun to outgrow the role he had assigned to himself all those years ago.

The center of the Universe. A one man show whose success was directly measured by its inscrutability to the rest of creation.

 _How exhausting,_ the man thought, _to be so alone..._

No wonder the Master's nature had finally rebelled by screaming out his feelings to the world.

It was a mystery how he had survived this long without snapping.

The man's eyes lingered on his friend as he pondered how much of this the Master might know, how much less he might understand... How he rationailized the needs he couldn't ignore.

The Master felt his friend's stare and stopped to give the warrior a sharp, suspicious glare.

"Doctor?" he asked, one eyebrow shooting up condescendingly. "Something to say?"

"It's better this way, don't you think?" the man said with a smile and a sweeping gesture at the cluttered workspace. "The two of us. Like the old days."

The boy smiled a slow, vulnerable smile. He ducked his head as his expression changed to snicker down at his circuits. "Finally figured that out, did you?" he muttered delightedly.

The man blinked, taken aback.

Every time he thought he had the Master pinned down...

He should really know better at this point.

And, as always, he knew he shouldn't ask but he just couldn't resist. "What's that supposed to mean, exactly?" he queried.

The Master put down his device but didn't look at his friend, as if he just couldn't drag his eyes all that way. "Just... Don't go away this time," he said quietly.

The man paused. "I wouldn't do that," he said sincerely. He'd never leave his friend alone and in need. 

He couldn't even imagine doing something like that.

There was a long, heavy pause. The Master stared down at his work without touching it, as if it was withholding vital information from him.

"Again," the Master said softly.

"What?" the man frowned.

"You wouldn't do that _again_ ," the Master corrected him. He looked up, eyes wide, expression hard to read.

He was trying to hide, trying to maintain the mask but the haunted look on his face spoke of nightmares and old wounds which never stopped aching under the scars.

But it was the desperation he could feel from the Master which finally struck the familiar chord of memory.

And time froze and the man's hearts stopped as he realized what the boy was talking about.

Not their recent misadventure at the village.

No, the Master was talking about something which had happened so many, many years before that...

When they had both been different men with different names.

And different lives.

That day when, for the second time in his life, the man who was now nobody had lost everything...

_No._

When they _both_ had.

The Master was talking about the day that man had run from Gallifrey without even saying goodbye to his best friend.

His friend who was also in mourning, who had no one left in the entire Universe to turn to.

Back then, he had had his reasons, certainly… He had been desperate and frightened... 

But...

For the first time in all the centuries... That decision suddenly seemed so _selfish_.

And here was that same friend, looking at him desperately out of a child's eyes.

That look stabbed him right through the chest.

He moved before he thought, acting instinctively as this regeneration had been designed to do.

He wrapped the little boy he'd grown up with in a tight hug. The Master's arms circled around him without the slightest hope of meeting at the back.

"You're right," he told the Master. "I was wrong and I was selfish. I didn't think about you."

Tears stung in his eyes and he closed them in pain and held the boy closer. Because now he _was_ thinking about what his friend must have been going through at the time.

And it made him sick. 

What must he have felt, alone and abandoned after such a loss...?

Alone for _centuries_.

"I'm not _blaming_ you," the Master mumbled, digging his fingers into the back of his friend's shirt in a frustrated gesture. "I don't need you to explain, I get it, I just... Just tell me, next time. If you do that again."

The man shook his head, guilt settling in his throat.

The Master could be so petty. Overreacting to perceived slights with vindictive cruelty.

And then... _This_.

When there was a real offense, when real pain had been caused, he acted as if there wasn't even anything to forgive.

It would have been almost easier if he had tried to take revenge. If he'd fought and screamed. Instead, the man was left with a child crying silently in his arms.

So he stroked him soothingly and didn't let go.

"I promise," the man said with a grimace as his own tears fought to escape. "I'm not planning on going anywhere."

The Master snorted a laugh which clearly conveyed derision, even muffled by his friend's coat. "When are you ever?"

"I'm sorry," the man said eventually. He backed away so the Master could see he meant it, but he put a hand to the little boy's tear-streaked face so there was still a connection. "I'm sorry I left you alone."

The Master grabbed onto his friend's hand like it was the only reality that mattered.

"Don't be _sorry_ ," the Master said with a shaky breath. He didn't even bother to wipe away the tears. "Just... Be _better_ ." It wasn't quite a plea, nor quite an order. It was the tone of someone speaking to their exact equal. He squeezed the man's hand tighter and his voice broke. "We need you to be _better_."

_We?_

The warrior wondered who the Master meant.

The Time Lords? Gallifrey?

The Universe?

There weren't a lot of groups the Master included himself in.

The man didn't come up with an answer but certainly everyone the warrior had dedicated his life to in this War _was_ depending on him.

And the Master deserved better than a repeat of past mistakes.

The man looked at his lifelong friend and nodded seriously. "I can do that."

All those centuries of freedom... The man who had been the Doctor had never once considered the effect that single choice had had on his friend.

Perhaps the Master wasn't the only one who sometimes lost perspective.

"Will you tell me," the man requested somberly after a few moments, "when I'm not?"

The Master laughed with a mischievous glint in his teary eyes. "Oh, Doctor... You can count on that." He frowned with a seriousness beyond his apparent years. "Last chance," he said.

The man shook his head, not bothering to hide his confusion. "Last chance? For what?"

The Master rolled his eyes disgustedly and rubbed at his leaking nose. "To back out. I told you you might not like what I have to say."

His face was a tightly-closed Pandora's box, bracing for expected disappointment.

And, just as in the story, there was that hope, buried at the very deepest point. Struggling to break free.

"No," the man said earnestly to the broken little boy in front of him. "No, thank you."

The Master narrowed his eyes, apparently considering his friend's ability to make rational decisions. "You're sure?" he asked. "I'm not kidding. I won't let you off the hook if you change your mind in five minutes."

As if asking his friend to talk to him was a veritable death sentence.

The man smiled, holding back a laugh. "I understand. I'm sure."

"Hmm," the boy responded with sharp eyes and a sneaking smile. "I'm going to hold you to that, you know, Doctor."

"I'd expect nothing less," the man said, patting his friend fondly on the cheek. He moved back to his work station.

He felt the Master's eyes following him.

"You know, this doesn't mean I owe you anything," the Master said from across the room.

"I didn't think you did," the man replied.

"I'm just saying," the Master said, arms crossed, blue eyes slitted cautiously. "Don't expect me to behave just because you're here. I'm not going to change who I am just to make your life easier."

The warrior gave him a patient smile. "Did I ask you to change?"

The boy frowned suspiciously, searching for an implied _quid pro quo_. Recalling none, he moved on to an outright warning. "You know I'm going to cause you a lot of trouble, right?" he said directly. He frowned in a way which was probably meant to be impressive.

The man chuckled nostalgically, setting a component snugly in its proper spot, blowing on it and turning the result over in his hands. "Well, that's hardly new, is it?"

When he looked up again, the Master was still peering at him, confused, as if he knew he was missing something. He gave up and spread his hands in disgust. 

" _Why_ , though? Why would you agree to this?" He enumerated his objections on small fingers. "You know I'm not going to do what you say. My emotions are apparently out of control. And I'm a _kid_ . That's a _lot_ of trouble," he said, clearly pointing out the obvious. "For _what_? You're not getting anything out of it!" He finished by giving his friend a reproachful look, disappointed by the man's foolish inability to bargain.

"Yes, I am," the man contradicted him.

He watched the Master struggle to catch up, knowing he'd get there eventually.

"What?" the boy wondered aloud with an impatient frown. "You didn't even _ask_ for anything." He shook his head with a disgusted expression.

"Because I already got what I wanted," the man replied with a steady smile.

Judging from the blank look he got in response, the Master still didn't get it, so the man gave him a clue. "What did I say?" he asked, tapping his head to indicate the Master should think back. "Were you listening?"

Freckled nose wrinkled in concentration. It took a few seconds but then a delighted smile spread over his face and his eyes lit up like the sun rising over the mountains.

"Really?" the Master squeaked.

"Yes, really," the man laughed, watching the boy trying unsuccessfully to stop grinning. "You and me, right?" the man said.

The boy giggled, fidgeting in his seat like he physically couldn't contain his joy. "You asked for the _one thing_ you already had?" he exclaimed critically.

The man blinked and shook his head, unable to miss that message, though the Master apparently had.

_"The one thing you already had."_

He said it as if it was obvious, as if it was assumed.

The statement itself was impossible to argue with.

The Master wasn't an easy person to be friends with. Uncontrollable, violent. Always difficult, often thoughtless.

But... Though the man sometimes forgot, whatever name he did or didn't go by, he never had chosen his friends. 

They chose _him_.

And the Master was the very first of those friends.

Always turning up at the worst times, sticking around through the centuries whether he was wanted or not.

The man had never truly thought about that, what that had all meant.

All the things they _hadn't_ said. Stumbling through the dark, arguing about who was right and who was wrong. Helping each other accidentally and on purpose.

The Master had buried his smile back in his work. "You're such an idiot..." he laughed happily.

"I suppose I am," the man agreed thoughtfully, thinking about all the implicit communication he must have missed over the centuries.

How much effort had the Master put into those plans, the ones he had pulled his friend into? 

And _why_? 

Not for the plan, certainly.

Just to spend a few hours with his friend?

They had never been very good at communicating but the message was hard to misinterpret, seeing the little boy the Master was now. Seeing and feeling all the emotions he currently didn't have the ability to hide.

He was humming to himself again, doing sums with a pencil and notepad. That smile kept tugging at the corners of his mouth despite his obvious efforts to stop it.

For someone who didn't know the Master very well, he might seem to be an entirely different person.

But... He really _wasn't_.

And that, the man knew, was the crux of the matter: because regeneration didn't change who you were. It simply gave new expression to preexisting aspects of your character.

Which meant that the Master's obvious joy, the smile he couldn't banish despite his best efforts on hearing his friend say he actually wanted him around... Those weren't _new_.

How long those needs had been buried, the man couldn't begin to speculate.

But it had been the Master who had approached that other little boy on their first day at the Academy. It had been the Master who came to Earth when his friend had been exiled there. And then there was that lifetime when the Master had somehow turned up at the end of several unplanned journeys, from the Jurassic era to the Middle Ages.

In hindsight, the man wondered if that could possibly have been a coincidence.

"So, is this how it's going to be then?" the Master asked, breaking into his friend's thoughts.

The man shook his head, unsure what his friend was referring to.

"You just sit there and watch while I do all the work?" He snuck a triumphant glance in the man's direction, happy to have called his friend out successfully.

The man chuckled and turned his focus back to his workbench, conceding the point.

It was days later, while they were out in the field, deep in enemy territory, that the man felt a small hand slip into his weathered one.

"I missed you, too, Doctor."

The words were scarcely audible and the hand pulled away again after mere moments.

And the mission continued.

But the man smiled, because in that moment, he had finally felt something positive from his friend.

He wasn't certain if it was accidental or intentional.

But it was _real_ , and the Master was trying to communicate.

Something which had always been difficult for both of them.

Well... They would both learn together. Just as they always had.

_The End_


End file.
